Aug. 18:

1590, John White, the governor of the Roanoke Island colony (in present-day North Carolina), returned to Roanoke after nearly three years abroad only to find the settlement deserted; the fate of the “Lost Colony” remains a mystery.

1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing American women’s right to vote, was ratified as Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it.

1963, James Meredith became the first Black student to graduate from the University of Mississippi.

2014, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon ordered the National Guard to Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis convulsed by protests over the fatal shooting of a Black 18-year-old, Michael Brown.

Aug. 19:

1692, four men and one woman were hanged after being convicted of witchcraft at Salem in the Province of Massachusetts Bay; the story of one of the men, John Proctor, inspired Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible”.

1812, the USS Constitution defeated the British frigate HMS Guerriere off Nova Scotia during the War of 1812, earning the nickname “Old Ironsides”.

1909, Indianapolis Motor Speedway hosted its first automobile race.

2010, the last American combat brigade exited Iraq, seven years and five months after a U.S.-led invasion marked the beginning of the Iraq War.

Aug. 20:

1866, President Andrew Johnson declared the official end of the Civil War.

1920, the American Professional Football Conference was established by representatives of four professional football teams; two years later, with 18 teams, it would be renamed the National Football League.

1986, postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill went on a deadly rampage at a post office in Edmond, Oklahoma, shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself.

2012, after 80 years in existence, Georgia’s Augusta National golf club (home to the Masters Tournament) invited former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina financier Darla Moore to become its first female members; both accepted.

Aug. 21:

1831, Nat Turner launched a violent slave rebellion in Virginia, resulting in the deaths of at least 55 white people; scores of Black people were killed in retribution in the aftermath of the rebellion, and Turner was later executed.

1911, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (It was recovered two years later in Italy.)

1992, an 11-day siege began at the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as government agents tried to arrest Weaver for failing to appear in court on charges of selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns; on the first day of the siege, Weaver’s teenage son, Samuel, and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan were killed.

2017, Americans witnessed their first full-blown coast-to-coast solar eclipse since World War I, with eclipse-watchers gathering along a path of totality extending 2,600 miles across the continent.

Aug. 22:

1791, the Haitian Revolution began as enslaved people of Saint-Domingue rose up against French colonizers.

1922, Irish revolutionary Michael Collins was shot to death, apparently by Irish Republican Army members opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty that Collins had co-signed.

1992, on the second day of the Ruby Ridge siege in Idaho, an FBI sharpshooter killed Vicki Weaver, the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver.

2007, A Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Iraq, killing all 14 U.S. soldiers aboard.

Aug. 23:

1775, Britain’s King George III proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.”

1970, the Salad Bowl strike began, organized by farm labor leader Cesar Chavez; between 5,000-10,000 laborers walked off the job, leading to the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history.

2003, former priest John Geoghan, the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked the sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another inmate attacked him in a Massachusetts prison.

2011, a magnitude-5.8 earthquake centered near Mineral, Virginia, the strongest on the East Coast since 1944, caused cracks in the Washington Monument and damaged Washington National Cathedral.

Aug. 24:

1814, during the War of 1812, British forces invaded Washington, D.C., setting fire to the still-under-construction Capitol and the White House, as well as other public buildings.

1932, Amelia Earhart embarked on a 19-hour flight from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, making her the first woman to fly solo, non-stop, from coast to coast.

1989, Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Gamete banned Pete Rose from the game for betting on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds.

2018, the family of Arizona Sen. John McCain announced that he had discontinued medical treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer; McCain died the following day.

— Associated Press